


Half a Boy (and Half a Man)

by chamel



Series: Hanging On For Dear Life: Songs of Cara Dune & Din Djarin [7]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bounty Hunters, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I mean, Mystery Character(s), Serious Injuries, if you really squint, the Cara x Din can be read as platonic or romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25803691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamel/pseuds/chamel
Summary: He’s been watching her for the last half-hour, ensconsed in a booth in a back corner, waiting for Cara to arrive. The mystery woman has proceeded to drink enough liquor to send a man twice her size under the table—barely showing it save when it serves her to pretend—and hustle several games of sabacc from unsuspecting victims who overestimate her drunkeness and underestimate her skill. There’s a flash in her eyes every time she wins that lingers in the back of Din’s mind like an itch he can’t scratch. Occasionally her eyes flick over to the Mandalorian, but if she understands that he’s watching her she doesn’t show it.(Din keeps crossing paths with a mysterious woman, and finds he can't get her out of his head.)
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV) & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Hanging On For Dear Life: Songs of Cara Dune & Din Djarin [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781008
Comments: 17
Kudos: 47





	Half a Boy (and Half a Man)

**Author's Note:**

> So, um. I don't know where this came from. No, that's a lie. It came about because Lady_Vibeke requested an OFC from me, but it grew into something completely unexpected.
> 
> Last week I gave you a Cara-centric story, and now it's Din's turn. This isn't a CaraDin story, in that it isn't really about their relationship, although I snuck some in anyway. How much you read into it is up to you.

_I left my home at an early age_  
_Broke my chains and rattled my cage_  
_Kicked around in an old tin can_  
_That's why I'm half a boy and half a man_

Din can’t shake the feeling that she is somehow familiar.

There is little chance that he’s ever met the firebrand currently lighting up the cantina; if nothing else, he’s pretty sure he would have remembered her. She is petite, with a willowy build that would look almost delicate if not for the dirt that seems to be permanently staining her hands and forearms, visible even from this distance. She wears shabby green coveralls and her dark brown hair is tied back in a messy bun, locks spilling out every once in a while when she lights into anyone who dares come too close.

He’s been watching her for the last half-hour, ensconsed in a booth in a back corner, waiting for Cara to arrive. The mystery woman has proceeded to drink enough liquor to send a man twice her size under the table—barely showing it save when it serves her to pretend—and hustle several games of sabacc from unsuspecting victims who overestimate her drunkeness and underestimate her skill. There’s a flash in her eyes every time she wins that lingers in the back of Din’s mind like an itch he can’t scratch. Occasionally her eyes flick over to the Mandalorian, but if she understands that he’s watching her she doesn’t show it.

She’s in the middle of her next game when Cara slides into the booth opposite him and reaches across the table to give the kid’s head an affectionate pat. Din is so entranced by the mystery woman that he hardly realizes his partner has arrived.

“Who’s the entertainment?” Cara asks.

Din doesn’t have to ask who she means. At that moment one of the mystery woman’s opponents stands up in a huff, leaning across the table angrily. He’s practically a giant compared to her, but she only sneers and stabs a knife into the table as a warning. Somehow, he knows enough to be cowed by this display.

“I don’t know,” Din says, shaking his head slightly. “She seems… familiar.”

He can feel Cara’s eyebrows shoot skyward, even if he doesn’t look at her. “You’ve seen her before?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”

“But she’s familiar.”

“Yes.”

Din knows it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s there all the same. He watches until he can sense Cara fidgeting, ready to be gone from this planet. Their bounty wasn’t here, and he knows that if Cara had found out where he went that she would say so. In the wind. It’s been a frustrating day, and he’s sure that sitting here isn’t improving Cara’s mood, but he feels fixed in place.

“C’mon,” Cara says eventually, pushing herself out of the booth, “I want a drink, and without that bounty we’re going to have to make do with what’s on the Crest.”

Reluctantly Din stands and lets himself be led out of the cantina. Just before they leave he turns back to look at the mystery woman and he feels their eyes meet despite the helmet. Her eyes are pools of brown so dark that they look black in the low light, and for a moment he imagines he sees himself reflected in them. Not his helmet. _Him_. It sends an odd sense of foreboding shivering down his spine.

* * *

That night, Din dreams of the day the battle droids came. He is playing in the woods near his house when he hears the first shots. He doesn’t understand what they are, or where they are coming from, but instinctively he knows that they mean _danger_. He and his friends run blindly back to the village, stumbling over rocks that weren’t there only moments ago. Somewhere from within the dream Din knows that they are rubble from the buildings already destroyed.

His house is empty when he arrives, parents nowhere to be found. He doesn’t understand, he knows they should be here. A bubble of panic rises in his throat. He never felt that as a child, only knows it from his adult understanding of what happened that day, but now he feels it in his eight-year-old body nonetheless.

The door crashes opens and his mother comes in, picking him up to carry him outside. It’s dark in the house, and he can't see her face until they emerge into the too-bright day. The eyes that look back at him belong to the mystery woman from the cantina, and he sees his adult face reflected in them.

He shouts himself awake, sweating heavily despite the cool air inside the Razor Crest. The blankets are hopelessly tangled around him and he stumbles as he fights his way out of them, landing with an inelegant thump on the ground next to his bunk. Slowly, realization that he’d been dreaming washes over him. He pants heavily and closes his eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall of the compartment.

A few moments later there is a soft knock on the door to the compartment. “Din?” Cara asks cautiously. “Are you ok?”

At first he can’t find the breath to answer her so he knocks three times on the wall, one long, two short. It’s their all-clear signal, and it doesn’t really make sense in this context, but he hopes she understands.

“Ok,” she answers. “I know you’re probably not wearing your helmet, but if you don’t answer for real in the next five minutes I’m going to come in and make sure you’re not dead. I’ll just, like, grope around with my eyes closed or something.”

Despite the anxiety he can still feel coursing through his veins, he smiles. Just knowing she’s out there seems to calm his frayed nerves somewhat, and he takes a few deep, slow breaths to ground himself.

“I’m fine,” he says eventually. “Just a nightmare.”

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks. Her voice sounds closer somehow, and he realizes she must be sitting just outside his door.

“Not really,” he admits. Probably he should, but he’s always been bad about this kind of thing. His Mandalorian family had chastised him for burying his trauma, assured him no good would come of it, but there was little they could do if he refused to talk about it.

“Ok,” Cara answers. “Well, I’m here if you do.”

He exhales heavily, half a sigh and half a huff. “I know.” He wants to tell her how much it means to him, that she’s here for him. Wants to say that having her around has been an unbelievably positive influence in his life, moreso than he could have ever imagined. He doesn’t, though. The middle of the night when he’s still high on adrenaline is not the time for such confessions.

After a while longer he finally pushes himself off the ground and slides back into his bunk. “I’m going back to bed,” he tells her, knowing she’s still sitting outside his door. “You should, too.”

“I will,” she promises, but he doesn’t hear her make any movements to stand. She’ll sit outside for a bit longer, he knows. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. Unfortunately, he thinks with no small amount of bitterness, it is unlikely to be the last.

* * *

Improbably, they run into the mystery woman again. This time Cara spots her first, and when she points the woman out Din realizes that somehow he’d already known she was here. He’d felt on edge since they landed on the planet, but he’d put it down to the fact that it wasn’t exactly a nice place to visit.

“I wonder what her story is,” Cara muses, her feet kicked up on their table in the cantina. “She’s fiesty.”

 _Fiesty_ is putting it mildly, Din thinks. The mystery woman has set herself up in a booth to one side of the cantina, apparently waiting for something or someone, judging by the way she’s watching the door. She gets approached frequently by what Din assumes are hopeful suitors and sends each and every one of them packing with a scathing glare. The more persistant ones get some choice words that he can’t hear from where they are sitting, and once a man leaves clutching his hand, blood leaking onto the floor. After that, the woman flips the knife in mute warning, and fewer people approach her.

The odd familiarity that he’d felt the first time he saw her has returned with a vengance. On several occasions he catches her staring at him, but somehow only when Cara is looking away. The absurd thought that maybe she can feel it too, the strange tie between them, flits through his mind.

He half listens as Cara talks through their next job, recovering not a bounty but an item. It is unusual, but seemingly pretty straightforward. Cara has spread a map of the compound they’ll infiltrate on the table, talking about guards and locks, and where they’ll find the package. Din looks down to follow her finger as she traces the path of least resistance, and when he looks up the mystery woman is gone. He shoves down a strange panic that surges within him at losing track of her.

“Don’t usually see a lot of Mandalorians around here,” a voice says from the shadows near their table. Din looks up to see the mystery woman emerge, arms crossed in front of her body, regarding them shrewdly. She glances down at the map as Cara rolls it up hastily, but if she recognizes it she doesn’t show it. “Are you following me?”

“No,” Din answers truthfully. “Coincidence."

The woman hums as she considers his words, eyes flicking between Din and Cara. Her full lips are curled into thoughtful frown, and the dark, rich brown of her eyes seems to bore through his helmet. Never has he felt so exposed.

“You’re pretty good with that knife,” Cara says, breaking the tense silence. She’s smiling at the mystery woman, friendly but guarded. Din wonders if Cara feels a kindred spirit. “Can we buy you a drink?”

The woman considers this for a moment before her face relaxes slightly and she shrugs. “Why not.”

She slumps into an open chair at their table, but Din can tell that her apparently nonchalant posture is an act. He sees muscles carefully tense under her skin, sees her eyes flitting around the room in watchfulness. Cara calls over the bartender and orders her usual whiskey; the woman grunts her assent to the same.

“I’m Cara Dune,” his partner says, “and this is Mando.”

The woman snorts, raising her eyebrows at him. “Mando? Really? A little on the nose, don’t you think?”  
  
Din shrugs. “What should we call you?”  
  
For a moment the woman seems to consider this, like she’s thinking of not telling them, or maybe just coming up with an alias. “Tana,” she says finally. Din’s not sure if it’s supposed to be her first name or last, but he has little footing to stand on.

The bartender delivers their whiskeys and Tana nabs hers, slamming it back in one gulp. Cara watches her with a bemused expression as she sips her own. The urge to ask Tana about her background is strong; now that she’s sitting so close, he knows for certain he’s never seen her before—at least not conciously—but the sense of familiarity is even stronger. There’s something in her eyes, and in the way she holds herself. Din wonders if he’s going a little insane.

“Interested in the Altix compound?” Tana asks suddenly, eyes flicking unmistakably to the rolled up map by Cara’s elbow. Cara stiffens, and Din can see her reach toward her weapon. For the first time, Tana actually smiles. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them. Watch out for the explosive defenses along the north wall.”

Din hadn’t been paying close attention, but he’s pretty sure there was nothing of the sort drawn on the map. Cara immediately confirms his memory. “How do you know there are defenses there?” she challenges, her eyes narrowing. Din knows this look well; it is usually a prelude to violence. Silently he wills Cara to keep it together. It would not do to draw attention to themselves.

Tana pushes herself out of the chair, looking unconcernedly at Cara and Din. “Easy,” she says. “I put them there. Thanks for the drink.”

The answer leaves a thousand questions on their tongues, but Tana disappears before they can put voice to even one. Cara even charges out of the cantina, looking for her, but returns moments later shaking her head.

When they infiltrate the compound he sees the charges, right where Tana said they’d be. She also appears to have been true to her word not to warn them; Din and Cara get in, acquire the package, and get out easily. Din spends the rest of the day puzzling over why someone would apparently build defenses then give away their secret to two random people they don’t know. He never comes up with a good answer.

_I don't stop and I can't say no_  
_I get a taste and away I go_  
_Both a tiger and a little lost lamb_  
_I'm half a boy and half a man_

Over the course of the next few weeks, Tana shows up in his dreams frequently. She is often a stand-in for his mother, both in dreams of that day and other more innocuous ones. Occasionally he’s in the middle of a job and she shows up as if to watch, providing snarky commentary on his fighting or his stealth. There are other times where Tana is just hanging around, lurking in the background as his parents shove him into the shelter or just within view as the Mandalorians rescue him. Twice, he sees a little girl in Tana’s place; she’s familiar in the way Tana is, though he doesn’t know who she is. The second time it happens his mind somehow tries to probe that memory, but when he does, panic threatens to strangle him and he wakes up shouting again.

Cara is there for him, always, never asking questions or expecting explanations. He doesn’t tell Cara about these dreams, and he feels miserable about it, but really, it’s embarrassing, having another woman featuring so prominently in his dreams. It seems unlikely that Cara will understand. How could she, when even he doesn’t? There’s also the fact that he’s brought up Tana, completely unintentionally, more than once in conversation. After the second time he could feel Cara scrutinizing him suspiciously; it’s better that she doesn’t know that the still-mysterious woman is haunting him.

It all comes to a head on a job about two months after the second time they saw Tana. It’s been a slog, chasing after a bounty that is far wilier than usual through dense forest without much of a break. Din doesn’t even remember the name of the planet—or is it a moon?—and he’s been so exhausted that he’s been sleeping dreamlessly through the short nights. They left the kid on Nevarro with Greef for this job, and he’s glad of their unexpected foresight. Both his and Cara’s patience is wearing thin, and they’ve started snapping at each other over nothing. He knows, underneath it all, that it’s just the stress—knows, unerringly, that their relationship will weather this storm—but it’s just so draining, on top of everything.

On the third day following their bounty’s trail through the jungle, he sees, unmistakably, Tana. They find the remains of a camp, almost certainly their bounty’s, and when Din enters the clearing Tana is there crouching over the coals from a fire, as if investigating it. She’s wearing dark green combat gear, brown hair tied into her usual messy bun, and her hands are smudged with what must be charcoal. Cara is a few steps behind him, and in the time it takes her to arrive Tana looks at him, smirks, and runs off.

“Tana!” Din calls after her, stunned. He has stopped dead just inside the clearing and Cara almost collides with him from behind.

“What the kriff?!” she yells, glaring at him. “What is your problem?”

That seems to snap him out his reverie and he stumbles across the clearing to where Tana had disappeared into the jungle. He pauses, looking back at Cara. “It’s Tana. She was here.”  
  
“What?” Cara is staring at him like he’s grown another head. She circles the clearing, easily finding the bounty’s trail a few feet away, and stops next to him.

“She ran off, just before you got here,” he tries to explain. The thought occurs to him that maybe the fatigue is getting him, that he’s dreaming on his feet, but she had been _so real_. He swears he can see her footprints in front of the remains of the fire. “She went this way,” he says confidently, pointing into the forest.  
  
“Are you high?” Cara scoffs. “There’s no trail here, Din. No one came this way.”

Din shakes his head stubbornly. He _knows_ he’s right. “She was here, I swear.”

Suddenly Cara is pushing him backward, both hands shoving his breastplate until his attention snaps to her instead of Tana’s trail. “What the kriff is wrong with you? Why are you obsessed with her?!”  
  
“Huh?” he replies, dumbfounded.

“You’re always bringing her up,” she fumes, clearly livid and at the end of her rope. “You _call her name_ in your sleep. Did you know that? It’s true, Din. I can _hear_ you. And now you are seeing her someplace she couldn’t possibly be.”

Din feels his eyes go wide behind his helmet, and he shakes his head again. “What? No!”

There’s a long moment where the soft sounds of the jungle are only interrupted by his heaving breaths coming over the modulator. Something deep within him says that Cara is right, that there is something seriously wrong with him, but it’s currently warring with another part that says he’s _not crazy_.

“You know what? Whatever,” Cara says eventually. “The bounty went this way. Let’s go. We can talk about this when we’re not losing ground on this asshole with every minute.”

“No,” Din hears himself say. “I have to go after her.”

“Don’t,” she warns, her voice low and deadly. “Don’t you do it.”

“I’m sorry,” he almost whispers. “Cara. I can’t. I have to.”

He can’t bear to wait for her answer, can’t take the look on her face anymore. Turning back toward Tana’s trail, he plunges into the forest after her, leaving Cara standing in the clearing.

* * *

  
The world around him is dark when he opens his eyes, and pain lances through nearly every part of his body. He thinks maybe he is dead, but then again surely he wouldn’t be in so much agony if that were the case. With no small amount of effort he pushes himself up onto one elbow, feeling the grit of dirt and rock underneath him. The movement causes an exquisite, blinding amount of pain to bloom in his right side, temporarily overwhelming all the rest. He grunts and falls backward, squeezing his eyes closed.

“You’re awake,” says a voice, distant in his ears, as if coming through a heavy fog. “Good.”

Din forces his eyes open and turns toward the sound. He realizes that it’s not pitch black like he thought, but nearly so; the only light given off by a small fire. Next to it, Tana sits on a rock with a long stick in her hand. She pokes the fire once, sending sparks swirling up into the air. Dimly, he realizes that they must be in some kind of small cave. For a moment he thinks he’s dreaming again, but no one’s mind can conjure up this much pain.

“What happened?” he croaks.

She glances up at him, but her gaze quickly returns to the fire. “Your bounty set a trap for you,” she tells him.

“You?” he asks.

“No. I was looking for him too. Not as a hunter. For a friend,” she says, like this explains anything. He lets the silence stretch between them, waiting for her to continue, but she seems reluctant to do so.

“And?”

When she looks up at him again there is something in her eyes that he can’t read. “I wasn’t the trap, but I’m afraid I might have inadvertantly lead you into it. I’m sorry, Din.”

At first he just accepts this, trying to remember what had happened after he left Cara, but then, abruptly, her last word sinks in. “How do you know my name?” he demands, his voice rough and less threatening than he might like.

“I know more about you than you know yourself, apparently,” she says, but there’s no danger in her tone. She’s not saying this to lord it over him, not plying it for leverage. She sounds almost sad. Her eyes flick down to his stomach and he forces himself to look down.

Somehow he hadn’t noticed before that his breastplate had been removed and the armor on his upper body peeled away. There’s a large bandage covering a full half of his abdomen. While he’s staring, wondering how he doesn’t remember getting such a large wound, Tana gets up and walks over, crouching next to him. She reaches out and trails a finger lightly over a very old, faded scar crossing several ribs, not covered by the bandage. He realizes there is blood under her nails and staining her hands, and he wonders if it is his.

“I remember this one,” she says softly. “I was so scared. I’d never seen that much blood before.”

He doesn’t know how that is possible. _He_ barely remembers that wound, the details lost long in the past. He can’t make heads or tails of what she is saying, his mind foggy from pain and whatever drugs she might have given him for it. Something lingers on the edge of his conciousness, just out of reach, but at the moment another thought interrupts him.

“How…? Did you take off…?” he struggles, gesturing as much as he can to his helmet.

She shakes her head, and relief floods through him. “I know better,” she tells him. She stares at him for a moment like she can see through the helmet anyway. “I just imagine you look like dad.”

The words crack open something deep inside him and he gasps, ignoring the pain that the movement elicits. He sees the little girl from his dreams, face somehow overlain on Tana’s, and suddenly he knows exactly who she is.

_He has a sister._

He is utterly, completely paralyzed as he struggles to make sense of this revelation. How could this be possible? How could he just have _forgotten_ such a huge part of his life? Now that he knows, memories flood back. Playing hide-and-seek in the forest near their home. Teasing her until she’s almost crying, hugging her when she falls and scrapes her knee.

“Trauma does crazy things to your head,” she offers, as if she can read his thoughts. “I’m guessing your mind shut me out to protect you. From the guilt.”

There is a lingering horror growing within him. He remembers that day clearly, remembers his parents and the droids and the Mandalorians. He does not remember his sister, even now.  
  
“What happened to you?” he gets out, his voice breaking with emotion.

Tana looks away from him, clearly gathering herself. Whatever happened, it can’t be a pleasant memory for her either. “It wasn’t your fault,” she says first, in a way that makes him think it was. “I was the one who wouldn’t come out. I thought you were trying to trick me.”

He realizes for the first time that one of the children playing in the woods that day had been his sister. When they had heard the shots he’d called for her, told her to come out, but she wouldn’t. He’d left her behind, unable to find her, planning to get their parents to help him look. But when he’d arrived they had shoved him into the cellar and told him they would go find her. He never saw any of them ever again.

“I left you,” he whispers, too horrified to even look at her.

“I told you, it wasn’t your fault,” she replies more forcefully, eyes flashing. Then she sighs, the expression on her face going soft. “You were a scared kid, same as me. I hid until everything got quiet again. When I came out, you were gone. I thought you were dead, for a long time.”

It all seems so impossible, but at the same time he knows unfailingly that it’s true. He looks at her features closely, seeing now what he hadn’t before. Her eyes are their mother’s through and through, but her delicate nose and jaw she got from their father. He reaches out to take her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. It’s small and delicate, but so rough with callouses. He can’t imagine what kind of life she’s had.

“You look more like dad than I do,” he says suddenly. She furrows her brow at him and then huffs out a laugh, and he can’t help but smile back. “How did you know it was me?” he asks.

“I didn’t, not for sure,” Tana answers, shaking her head. “Not until I saw the scar. There was something about you, when I saw you in the cantina that first time. I remembered hearing that there were Mandalorians that day. That they had rescued some of the children. Rationally, I thought there was no way it could be you, but there was something else…”

“I felt it too,” he tells her. “I’ve… I’ve been dreaming about you.”

Tana smiles at him and squeezes his hand. “That can’t have gone over well with your lady friend.”

“Oh god, Cara,” Din gasps. He tries to push himself up again, but the pain that had receded to a dull roar spikes forward again and threatens to blind him. “Is she—”

He feels a steady hand on his shoulder pushing him down and realizes he’s closed his eyes. When he forces them open he sees his sister staring at him in concern. “She’s fine,” Tana insists. “At least, she was the last time I saw her.”

“What?” He’s confused again; for all he’s remembered, he still has no idea what happened more recently. “What happened with the bounty? How long have I been here?”

“A few days,” she tells him. “She’s looking for you.”

“And what have you been doing?” he asks. It comes out more demanding and accusatory than he intended, but he doesn’t like not understanding what’s going on.

Tana fixes him with a withering, if affectionate, glare. “Keeping your ass alive. You couldn’t be moved in your condition, and I couldn’t… well, it’s better if no one knows I’m here.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s… complicated,” she says, staring off into the distance again. “The less you know the better.”

“If you’re in trouble, I can help…” Din begins, only to be cut off by her low, mirthless chuckle.

“No,” Tana murmurs. “You’d be the one in trouble, if anyone knew I had a brother.”

“I can take care of myself,” he protests, but he’s unable to stop from wincing as she looks pointedly at his battered body. “Usually.”

Tana reaches up and places a hand gently on the side of his helmet, gazing fondly at him. “I know you can. But there are some situations that don’t call for blasters and beskar. Just, trust me, ok? I’m not in trouble. I’m not in danger. But you and your family would be.”

It feels unnatural, putting this much trust in someone that he truly barely knows. The years he and Tana have spent apart far exceed the ones they spent together. At the same time, he can feel the it deep in his bones. He doesn’t understand, and somehow he knows he never will, but he trusts her. He gives her a slow nod and watches as some of the tension leaves her shoulders.

“I guess this is where I tell you I can’t stay, now that you’re awake,” she says relucantly, not meeting his eye. “I’ll make sure Cara finds you soon.”

He wants to protest this, to insist that she stay or at least give him a little more information, but he just promised to trust her and he can’t very well go back on it immediately. Instead, he fights back all his questions and asks, “Will I see you again?”

“Maybe. Who can say what the future holds?” she answers, smiling sadly. Huffing a deep breath, she finds his eyes unerringly through the visor. “Din, I know it’s not in your nature, but I need you to promise me that you won’t try to find me.”

“I’m… not sure I can do that,” he says honestly. At that she frowns and opens her mouth to argue, but he holds up a hand. “I can promise I won’t try to get in contact, or try to see you, although it pains me to say that. Can you promise that you won’t disappear forever?”

Tana appears to consider this, somewhat unhappily, but finally she nods. “Ok, fine. I promise.” They sit there, staring at each other, for a long moment, until she reaches behind her neck and unclasps a necklace that lay hidden under her shirt. When she pulls it out he sees a glint of silver. “Here, you should have this,” she says, holding it out to him.

Din takes the necklace without thinking, looking down at where it sits in his palm. The pendant at the end is delicate, an angular, abstract shape that is not quite a star. He knows it well.

“I can’t take this from you,” he protests, trying to hand it back to her. Tana just holds up her hands in refusal.

“I’ve held onto it long enough,” she tells him. “You should have a chance now.”

Slowly, his fingers close around the necklace and he withdraws his hand. He watches as Tana stands from her crouch and moves to grab a bag that he hadn’t seen before. It strikes him as powerfully unfair, to find his sister and then lose her again so quickly, but little in his life has been fair.

“You’re an aunt, you know,” he says. “By Mandalorian law.”

Tana pauses and turns back to him, a sad, wistful smile on her face. “He’s cute. I know he didn’t get that from you.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes, and he can’t help but huff out a laugh.

“No fair taunting an injured man,” he replies with an exaggerated pout that he knows she can somehow see.

“C’mon, if you can’t make fun of your dumb older brother, what’s the point?”

They both laugh at that, until Din winces in pain and presses a hand to his injury. He allows a heavy sigh to escape him. “I hope our paths cross again,” he says.

Tana crouches down next to him again and puts one hand on his shoulder, pulling their heads together until her forehead contacts his helmet. “I know they will.”

_I'll never be your one and only_  
_There's more to me than what you see_  
_I can't help being what I am_  
_Cause I'm half a boy and half a man_

When he wakes again Cara is kneeling by his side, calling his name with obvious anxiety in her voice. At first he wonders if everything had been a dream, but when he tries to push himself up the sharp pain of his injury lances through him. He can see Tana’s bandage, still in place, and the remains of the fire are still smoldering. She hasn’t even been gone that long.

“Oh, god, Din, are you ok?” Cara asks, snapping his attention back to her. Her face is wan and sallow, dark circles falling under her bloodshot eyes.

“You look like shit,” he says before he can stop himself. She laughs too loud, a hiccuping half-sob, and he can see unshed tears glistening in her eyes. He reaches up as best he can and cups her cheek gently. “Hey. I’m ok.”

“I look better than you, asshole,” she shoots back, but her voice is heavy with tenderness. “What the kriff happened to you?”

Din groans as he tries to sit up more. “I don’t really know.”

Cara’s finger skim gently over the bandage, checking the edges before peeling one back gently to look underneath. Even Din hasn’t seen it, and the wound isn’t pretty. It’s long and jagged, extending from just below his ribs to nearly the top of his hip. There are a line of neat stitches patching it together.

“I know you didn’t do this yourself,” Cara says as she carefully replaces the bandage.

“Tana,” he rasps out, his voice unexpectedly rough. Cara looks up at him sharply, eyes searching through his visor like she’ll be able to read something from the face she can’t see. “She saved my life.”

Cara’s face shutters and the corners of her mouth tug downwards. “Ah, well I guess you don’t need me around, then,” she says, thick with sarcasm and bitterness.

“Cara,” he pleads, wanting nothing more than to wipe the hurt expression off her face. “She’s my sister.”

He succeeds in his goal. Cara’s features shift into utter shock and disbelief. “You— But how—?” she stammers, shaking her head.

“In the trauma from that day… my mind suppressed memories of her,” he explains. It’s not enough, but he hasn’t ever been able to share the details with anyone, even Cara. She knows he was rescued by the Mandalorians, that his parents are dead, but little else. He is eternally gratefully when Cara nods, understanding despite this. “That’s why she seemed familiar to me, in the cantina. Why I was dreaming about her.”

“She felt it too?” Cara asks. There is confusion and curiosity glinting in her eyes, and something that looks a lot like relief.

“Yeah.” An impulse strikes him and he holds out his hand to her, still clutching the necklace. “She gave me this. It was our mother’s.”

Cara takes the necklace from him to look at it more closely, and the silver glints in the low light that manages to leak in from the entrance to the cave. “It’s beautiful,” she murmurs, then tries to hand it back to him.

“Please,” he manages, his throat tight with both pain and emotion. “Can you hold onto it for me?”

He watches her eyes go wide at the implication and prepares himself for a protest, but to his surprise she nods, withdrawing her hand and tucking the necklace away in a pocket. “I’ll keep it safe.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you think you can walk?” she asks, schooling her features back to practicality. “The ship isn’t too far.”

He nods, even though he doesn’t know for sure. His legs seem to be uninjured, though,so theoretically, yes, he can walk. He lets Cara grab his good side, hauling his arm over her shoulder, and together they manage to stand without the pain from his injury making him pass out. They slowly hobble to the wall so Din can brace himself, then Cara sets about gathering the pieces of his armor that lay nearby. A few minutes later she’s managed to wrap them up in the remains of his shirt and slings the bundle over her shoulder.

The walk to the ship is excruciatingly painful and takes at least three times as long as it should. Cara is unfailingly patient with him, though, preventing him from falling multiple times, never pushing him to move faster. She talks as they travel, trying to offer something for him to focus on besides the pain.

“After you took off I followed the bounty for a while, but he double-backed on me,” she told him, huffing slightly with the effort of mostly carrying him. “I thought you would come to your senses and show up, but you never did. Eventually I picked up your trail and found the bounty not long after, tied up and unconcious. Knife wound in his leg, and huge amount of blood on the ground, not his. I couldn’t find any trails beyond that. It was like you found him and then up and disappeared.”

“Tana said he set a trap,” Din manages. “She must have rolled him up when she found me.”

Cara grunts at that, and it’s a difficult sound to interpret. “I looked for a while. Didn’t know what to do. Ended up taking the bounty back and throwing him in carbonite. Went back to look for you. There was so much blood, Din. After the first day I thought you were probably dead, but I wasn’t going to leave until I found your body.”

“I’m sorry, Cara,” he croaks. Abruptly his knees want to give out, and he manages to signal to her to take a rest. She carefully lowers him onto a fallen log and fishes out a canteen of water, taking a long draw before handing it over to him.

“Why didn’t she go get help?” Cara asks him.

If only he really knew. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me much. Said it’s safer for me, for us, if I don’t know.”

They sit in silence while Cara appears to consider this. Din knows she’s trying to figure out what Tana could be mixed up in, but ultimately it could be an infinite number of things. The only thing he can figure is that she either works with, or for, or against, some very dangerous people. That doesn’t really narrow it down.

“I have some contacts who might know about her,” Cara says eventually, offering the water back to him.

“No,” he sighs. “I promised her I wouldn’t. I trust her, Cara.”

She stares at him, eyes finding his through the visor. He can tell she’s trying to keep her face impassive, trying not to give too much away, but the worry in her eyes is unmistakable. He wonders what she’s looking for in his masked face; the subtle tilt of a head, a line of tension in the shoulders. Eventually, she nods, accepting.

“Ok,” she agrees quietly. “Then I trust her, too.”

* * *

They are grounded for several more days. Din can’t even think about trying to climb the ladder to the cockpit in his current condition, and Cara has never bothered to learn the Razor Crest’s idiosyncracies. They’ll have to change that, Din thinks, once things are back to something like normal. It’s the first time he’s been so seriously injured, and normally it would hardly matter, but every day that he spends apart from the kid increases his anxiety twofold.

Greef has taken to sending them regular holovids, mostly featuring the kid lording over the cantina like a tiny tyrant. He tells them that one hunter had tried to threaten him over a payout and the kid had folded the blaster in half with a wave of his hand, and since then no one has dared question him. He laughs that the kid is a better enforcer than Cara ever was, and Din’s not entirely sure it’s a joke.

It’s been more than a week since they left the kid on Nevarro, and Din is unwilling to wait any longer. Cara is busy in the galley when he makes his effort to climb the ladder, knowing that she would try to stop him if she saw. He’s seeing stars by the time he gets to the top and flops heavily onto the floor, his legs still half hanging into the top opening. There are spots of blood leaking through his bandage and he swears quietly under his breath.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Cara says from below.

He knows she’s standing at the bottom looking up at him, can picture the expression on her face. After a few more moments he hears the unmistakable sound of her climbing the rungs below him. Soon her head pops into view and she pushes his legs to the side so she can sit on the edge next to him. She hums disapprovingly as she pushes his shirt up and sees the bandage.

“I’m fine,” Din protests, even though his vision hasn’t quite lost the blurriness at the edges. If he lies here for a bit longer, he will be.

“I’m as anxious to get him as you are,” she tells him, tenderness creeping into her voice despite her best efforts to scold him, “but pulling your wound open won’t help anything.”

“Well, I’m already up here now. Might as well go.”

Cara huffs at him, and out of the corner of his eye he can see her fighting a fond smile. “You are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks,” he grins. He watches as something almost melanocholy slides into her face. “What is it?”

She shakes her head and sighs. “I’d like to meet her. Really meet her, I mean. But I also don’t know if I could handle two of you.”

“Probably not,” he retorts, but his voice has gone thick with emotion.

He can just see the fine silver chain of his mother’s necklace peeking out from the neckline of Cara’s shirt. After he hadn’t asked for it back, she had started wearing it despite the fact that he’d never seen her wear jewelry before. When he’d managed to get up the courage to ask her about it, she’d just shrugged and said it was the easiest way to make sure it was safe.

“C’mon,” she says, pushing into a crouch and positioning herself to help him sit up. “Let’s go save Karga before the kid executes a full takeover.”

* * *

_Epilogue_

The first gift shows up quite randomly, sitting by one of the Razor Crest’s landing gears while they’re out on a simple supply run. At first both of them assume it’s some kind of bomb and only after extensive scanning reveals nothing that could be potentially explosive do they carefully open the bright green paper. Inside the box is a plush loth-cat and a simple note:

_Sorry I’ve neglected my auntly duties — T_

It takes an embarrassingly long time for Din to regain his composure. Cara presents the toy to the kid and he burbles happily, squeezing the stuffed cat hard enough to strain the seams.

After that, the presents show up ever month or so—sometimes with a note, sometimes without—and the kid’s toy compartment starts getting a bit overfull. To Din’s chagrin, he takes a special liking to a small wind-up model of a droid, letting the mechanical toy chatter across the floor of the ship at the most inconvenient times.

In a way, it makes it easier for Din to keep his promise not to look for her, knowing that she’s somehow keeping an eye on them. He doesn’t know how she does it, because most of the time _they_ don’t even know where they are going until they get there. Sometimes he wonders if she delivers each of the packages herself, or whether she has agents at her disposal to do so for her. He suspects the latter.

One day, they find a package with some kind of plush ovoid orange-and-grey creature with a white belly and large dark eyes, like Din has never seen before. The note that accompanies it doesn’t name it, but does make his heart stop.

_Got a few days off. Family reunion?_

There is a set of coordinates underneath, and when Din types them in they show up off in unknown space. Well. They better get going, then.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the stuffed animal at the end is a porg, and yes, they are going to Ahch-to. Where there just happens to be a Jedi temple. I really don't forsee a sequel to this, but I suppose you never know.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this somewhat unusual work from me. I'd love to know what you thought, and I am also super curious when you figured out who Tana was in the story!


End file.
